Compost Tea

To make "compost tea" here's what you need:
BASICS
5 gal bucket w/lid
An old nylon stocking
some compost

Put the compost (2 cups or so) in the stocking, then tie the top off, put this in the bucket filled with water 3/4 of the way full. Place the lid on and let step in the sun 3-6 days

ADVANCED
In the stocking you may also add:
molasses
2 Tbls Epsom salts
lake or sea weed
stinging nettle
Alfalfa cubes

You may also add a bit of Apple Cider vinegar to the water, 2 Tbls is enough.
Also adding a fish tank air pump with an air stone will increase your aerobic bacteria, an added bonus for sure. I just drilled a hole in the lid big enough to run the air hose through.

Then apply as a foliar feed with a hand sprayer, spray tops and bottoms of the leaves, or water with it once a week, or both.
And I've been asked before about spraying the bottom of the leaves. It's OK I've done it for years now.
Also foliar feeding feeds your plants 90% of the goodies now as to root feeding feeds your plants 10 - 15% eventually.

_________________
Growing to save the past for the future.

Namaste'

Compost tea is a wonderful product for your gardens when made correctly. Most people are now using aeration when making the tea....here's why:

Most beneficial organisms in your soil are strict aerobes and require high levels of oxygen to survive. Most pathogens are anaerobic in nature and prefer low to no oxygen conditions.

Have you ever picked up a handful of compacted soil? Typically it stinks and smells like vomit or some other form of decay. These are the gases put off by anaerobic microbes.

On the other hand, everyone knows what good soil smells like, it has very little odor or maybe a slight earthy smell. It's the same with compost tea.

You need the oxygen in the water to stay at or above 6 mg/l when brewing. If you're not adding oxygen, this becomes problematic because as the organisms consume the nutrients and begin to replicate, they will use up the oxygen supply very rapidly. Once the available oxygen is used up, now we have anaerobic conditions in our tea and have select environmental conditions for exactly the organisms we didn't want.

I've been making and selling compost tea and compost tea brewers for years now and also look at the teas under a microscope. Many people don't realize the level of science that goes into doing it correctly. Some will try it out and make poor tea and then say that compost tea doesn't work. Others will actually damage their plants. My goal is to get people making tea correctly so they can see the benefits of this wonderful technology.

~Tad